Bel­bury Poly, the first and still pop­pi­est artist on Ghost Box’s ros­ter, released their third full-length record ear­lier this win­ter. Despite being the least abra­sive of the Ghost Box club, they’ve still always retained a creepy vibe, some­thing that is a lit­tle less pro­nounced here. Still, it’s more of what you’ve come to expect from the niche label — gur­gling and plunk­ing elec­tron­ics seated squarely in a half-imaginary past of British alchemy, mys­ti­cism, and edu­ca­tional multimedia.

Also notable is the album art’s increased depar­ture from the Romek Mar­ber homages that have char­ac­ter­ized Ghost Box releases. I’d have admired their tenac­ity if they had stuck with the same tem­plate through every release, but I guess they can’t be blamed for want­ing to try some­thing a lit­tle different.

And if you are in or around Lon­don, be sure not to miss the Bel­bury Youth Club Night at The Shunt Lounge, this Wednes­day, March 11.

I have to admit that I’m rel­a­tively new to this genre, so my inter­est in it is fun­da­men­tally lack­ing in any his­tor­i­cal con­text. But I knows what I likes, and this is grip­ping stuff. In my flir­ta­tions with this kind of min­i­mal­is­tic, abstract elec­tron­ica, I’ve found that it’s dif­fi­cult to achieve a bal­ance between a com­mit­ment to exper­i­men­tal­ism and sheer lis­ten­abil­ity, but I think Ryoji Ikeda suc­ceeds. Though largely form­less, save for at most skele­tal rhythms, his new album Test Pat­tern is imme­di­ately engag­ing merely through its mono­chro­matic, micro­tonal tex­tures. It skit­ters and pops at a some­times fran­tic pace, crack­ling, buzzing, and ring­ing in enough var­ied ways that I’m truly never bored by it. If you’ve been avoid­ing “amelodic non­sense” like this, here’s an oppor­tu­nity to have your mind changed. I only hope it’ll lead me to more things that sur­prise me in the same way.

It seems Ratatat are get­ting ready to fol­low up their 2006 sopho­more release Clas­sics, which I thought was leaps and bounds above their debut self-titled, and cer­tainly one of my favorites from that year, if not this decade. Two weeks ago they released the sin­gle Shiller, whose A-side you can lis­ten to here. Both tracks are creepy and less beat-driven than their recent stuff, for sure, and I’m glad to see them reach­ing again this time around. “Shiller” will be fea­tured on their forth­com­ing LP, LP3, which Evan Mast describes as being “wildly dif­fer­ent than any­thing we’ve done” as well as “by far the best album we’ve ever made,” in this inter­view with Audio­junkies. Hey that sounds promis­ing doesn’t it.

Although I love lis­ten­ing to Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons each morn­ing, there are actu­ally very few times I’m com­pelled to take note of any par­tic­u­lar thing they play. But this morn­ing I heard “Fam­ily Romance” by Depart­ment of Eagles, and had to call in make sure I got their name.

Depart­ment of Eagles is a duo com­posed of Daniel Rossen (of Griz­zly Bear) and Fred Nico­laus. The song, while amaz­ing, didn’t rep­re­sent the full range of what they do. I was able to snag a copy of The Cold Nose; it’s a sur­pris­ingly var­ied blend of odd sam­ples (strings, piano, spo­ken word), elec­tronic manip­u­la­tions, drum machine, acoustic/electric gui­tar, vocal cho­ruses, and prob­a­bly sev­eral other things I’m for­get­ting. The per­va­sive hip-hop lean­ings — which tend to be dark, DJ Shadow-inspired dal­liances — are prob­a­bly most exem­pli­fied in “Forty Dol­lar Rug,” a tongue-in-cheek glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of bach­e­lor life (“Forty dol­lar rug/ Twenty dol­lar lamp/ Playsta­tion 2/ Tony Hawk 4″).

Mean­while, they don’t mind sound­ing like Radio­head at times, in their creepy, Kid A–like har­monies, albeit backed by weird things Radio­head would prob­a­bly never touch.

The Cold Nose was orig­i­nally released in 2003 under a dif­fer­ent title, and was just reis­sued this year with some bonus tracks; for my money, it’s bet­ter than any­thing Rossen has done with Griz­zly Bear, and I’m sorry to have only come across it so recently. The project is, as far as I can tell, defunct.

Songs of Green Pheas­ant is the record­ing name of Dun­can Sump­ner, orig­i­nally of Eng­land, and resid­ing now in Cal­i­for­nia. I’ll be damned if I can remem­ber where I heard about Aer­ial Days, 2006’s follow-up EP to his debut LP of 2005, but for a while in June it sound­tracked my falling asleep at night.

Any­way I just got a hold of his new LP, Gyl­lyng Street, and it’s pretty beau­ti­ful. Accu­sa­tions of freak-folkdom weren’t totally unfounded before, but I think this release will help to abol­ish that mis­cat­e­go­riza­tion. It’s gauzy, even a lit­tle shoegazey, and, admit­tedly, kind of pas­toral. But its chug­ging momen­tums and elec­tronic flour­ishes recall Bibio, Chessie, Cari­bou at times (due to the vocal qual­ity, I think), and I swear I even hear a lit­tle Joy Divi­sion. “West Coast Pro­fil­ing” is par­tic­u­larly great, rat­tling along grace­fully for five min­utes before mor­ph­ing into a bleak, fune­real elec­tric gui­tar line, soar­ing, uniden­ti­fi­able pipes, and thump­ing, tambourine-led per­cus­sion. A great sound­track to the falling temperatures.